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themusicman2001
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Joined: 03 Sep 2002
Posts: 1139
Location: Glorious Wales
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 Posted: Fri May 01, 2009 8:57 pm Post subject: Carreg Cennen Castle |
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Hi All... been spending more time with the Camera rather than on the synths of late. Been experimenting with tonemapping and HDR, so here's a tale.
We had a nice visit to Carreg Cennen Castle last weekend with Jen, our kids and Sister in Law, and what a lovely location it was in too, right in the middle of nowhere a few miles outside Ammanford, perched smack on the top of a prominent hillside. I imagine in its heyday that it was a busy place.
Allegedly haunted, alas we didn't spot anything...
I did take this shot of it, processed in tonemap style. Taken with an Olympus E-3, and a 7-14mm lens. Enjoy...
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John
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laughing_bear
Platinum Member
Joined: 30 Jan 2002
Posts: 2970
Location: atlantic coast - northwest ireland
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| Posted: Mon May 11, 2009 8:44 am Post subject: |
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Hi,
Long time no see. How are you doing?
The picture has potential John. it helps to shoot with tripod, mirror lock up of round bout 5 seconds and cable release.
Because of the characteristics of that particular lense, some form of postprossessing correction is always required. A good choice is PT lense, where the 7-14 is already considered in it's data base. Note the ugly blodgy gras area bottom right.
I would crop out more of the foreground, it does not add any interest, correct the perspective, and do some more detail work on the castle and the sky. A readout shows that the latter has areas that are @ 255/255/255, hence contain no image details and are completly burned out. Not useable for printing!
Some gentle dodge/burn would help the overall balance.
I might be wrong, but it looks as this is a typical Photomatix processing. You might want to look at enfuse for a more organic and natural looking tone mapping.
Well done!
P.S.
I am ditching all my Olympus gear this summer. I shot with every lense available for a year now. While the lenses are quite good, the files are crap in my opinion. The e3 already produces noise even at ISO 100 in certain conditions. The color quality of the E1 has not been matched, I prefered the color IQ of the E1 much more.
Still the E3 is a fine camera if larger prints are not the biggest requirements. For landscape work she is not the first choice as she does not provide enough details IMHO. While the files can be scaled up quite good with the correct procedure, it shows the lack of details. This applies mostly to high frequency data.
Hopefully I am going to shoot with a P65+ phase one this summer. - Fingers crossed! - On the DSLR front, I have not made up my mind yet. |
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themusicman2001
Platinum Member
Joined: 03 Sep 2002
Posts: 1139
Location: Glorious Wales
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| Posted: Tue Jul 07, 2009 4:37 pm Post subject: |
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Hiya Bear
Thanks for the constructive feedback... spot on as usual. I will take all you suggest on board and try to improve this technique. Still relatively new to photography let alone bracketing and photomatix!
So, selling your Oly gear eh... do you have the 7-14mm to sell...? if so, PM me.
John
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John
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themusicman2001
Platinum Member
Joined: 03 Sep 2002
Posts: 1139
Location: Glorious Wales
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| Posted: Tue Jul 07, 2009 6:01 pm Post subject: |
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Here's a more recent one bear... thoughts on this one?
River Usk, Llangynidr
This is the River Usk, just south of Bwlch close to Llangynidr. Taken while out walking with Jen, heather and the dogs, in the unusually hot and humid weather spell experienced during the first week in July.
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John
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Sharp
Site Admin
Joined: 02 Jan 2002
Posts: 18197
Location: Ireland
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| Posted: Tue Jul 07, 2009 6:32 pm Post subject: |
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Beautiful images there John. 
Regards.
James. |
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laughing_bear
Platinum Member
Joined: 30 Jan 2002
Posts: 2970
Location: atlantic coast - northwest ireland
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| Posted: Sun Jul 12, 2009 8:01 am Post subject: |
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| themusicman2001 wrote: | Here's a more recent one bear... thoughts on this one?
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Hi John,
all gear is gone unfortiunately already. I am going to miss the 90-250 f2.8, then again, I am not missing the weight. <grins> I am shooting with a phase one (medium format) as well as the alpha900 and a variety of lenses now. New territory and I am glad to have a very powerfull Mac here, otherwise processing would be a very painfull exercise. The phase one is a beast, and requires flawless shooting techniques, anything less would show in the picture, the reward is a 40 MP file with outstanding tonality. The alpha900 is my walkaround camera now, my always on lense is the Zeiss 135mm F1.8, but I like all of them Zeiss lenses a lot.
I can only make suggestions and very personal observations John.
Composition: I would crop this different and adjust the horizon about 0.9 degrees, which gives you a totally different impression. As for crop, I would crop out the person to the left and a good bit from the bottom probably around 1/5.
By doing this, you would avaoind two things. 1. Centric view; In my world a centric view is very rarely desired. 2. Focus; This way you could help the picture to add a stronger composition that allows the observer to focus on the essentials in the scene.
Here it would seem that you were fascinated by the reflections in the water, but a stronger geometrical composition would help that a lot. If you could have stepped back for example, if possible, the full reflections of the trees to the right could have been covered as well. This way you see only a part and this makes it less interesting.
In general; I would question the choice to use HDR on a scene like this. - Why? - HDR can be used to increase the visible a dynamic range in a given scene where normally aspects would loose out.
Here, we see a very contrasty picture in the first place, the sunlight causing strong reflections in the foiliage, which btw. can be controlled easily with circ. Pol Filters. Without that, the already harsh light turns even harsher through the choice of processing. Shooting over water is another such example where a circ. Pol is a must have.
The midtones are very contrasty and the highlights burned out too much (clouds), but the worst part are the shadows. While a HDR should help to open shadow information, here it is completly lost. Note the dark area to the right of the tree in the water, there is not enough texture left to be seen.
Suggestion, revisit the place and take your time when composing the frame. First, try to make a choice what you want to show, and then reduce it to the essentials, try different angles and heights.
Choose a different time to shoot with more pleasant light. Now in July, best time is 5:00 AM - 10:00 AM and 7:00 PM - Sunset and beyond. Take midge jacket with you. <grins> |
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laughing_bear
Platinum Member
Joined: 30 Jan 2002
Posts: 2970
Location: atlantic coast - northwest ireland
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| Posted: Mon Jul 13, 2009 1:23 pm Post subject: |
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John,
forgot to mention something. For to get the best possible out of your files, I would recommend to use CAPTURE ONE, while a bit pricey, it extracts more detail informations from your files than any other RAW developer.
Be prepared for a wee bit of a learning curve though, as the GUI is different from anything else you might be used to, but it is worth it!
I use C1 for extraction and concerting to 16 bit TIFF before I export to Lightroom and eventually from there to Photoshop. |
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